Chasin' Jesus

Sunday, January 21, 2018

I don’t like
Walmart. It is a predatory capitalist monopoly that thrives on miserable,
low-paid labor from around the world, environmental vandalism, and the worst
kinds of consumer manipulation. Walmart wields considerable and malignant
political power. It is, to use my Christian idiom, one of the principalities
and powers; and we know who’s in charge of those.

Saturday, December 16, 2017

If I am sliding uncontrollably down a steep embankment headed for a cliff, I won't look for a ladder. I'll flail and clutch for anything--animal, vegetable, or mineral--to get hold of and arrest the fall.

Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Interview with Stan Goff

What prompted you to write this novel?

Masochism. I write nonfiction as a rule, and it is one thousand times easier than fiction. Because nonfiction does not require the emotional investment, and you can't resort to mere facts to ensure you haven't strayed from certain truths. I've been writing about war for over two decades, and about gender for a good portion of that. But how these two things mix to become twice as volatile is hard to get across in a theoretical or even historical conversation. I wanted to wrestle with these two things through the development of a story. And to use the actual experiences of others and myself to undermine the pernicious myths that perpetuate militarism.

Saturday, November 11, 2017

Normally, I go on a kind of tangent about militarism and epistemology. This year I'm leaving all poking and sniffing and bloviating around the Veteran-as-signifier, to others. Because the signifier Veteran on Veteran's Day is contrived as a prop to show the sacredness of war. At the very inner core of our national rituals valorizing The Veteran is the love of war.

Wars are carried out by armed organizations, generally understood as the military, though there is a long menu of differing armed organizations engaged in a diversity of forms of war. Those organizations are comprised of humans, mostly male humans, but more and more including a female fraction as well. What does war and the preparation for war do to those people who are in those organizations?